In War Times (33 page)

Something in him was exhausted. Maybe, like many other G.I.’s, he had gone through things so strange that he just needed to reassure himself that the world was normal, that his wartime experiences had been some kind of fluke. His childhood home seemed like a good place in which to try to recapture some sense of surety.

Keenan was everywhere, and nowhere. It was as if he might breeze in at any moment, toss his hat on the hook, give their mother a hug, and say to Sam, “How about tonight, kid? The Odd Fellows are going to be whooping it up again and I’ve got an engraved invitation to the mayhem.” His old room was still the same, even though he’d moved out years ago—a bookshelf filled with boyhood books, Boy Scout Eagle pin in a small cardboard box, his knife collection in the center drawer of his desk.

The war was over, but Keenan was still dead. Sam realized it slowly, day by day, as he steeped himself in their old haunts—the Puzzle River, Jimmy the Greek’s, the now overgrown ballfield that Square Man Belford had carved out of an unused field years ago for his son and friends.

Hadntz’s device had actually done nothing much, despite some promising signs. Maybe the entire war had been an hallucinatory dream—their labs, meeting Hadntz, being alone with Princess Elizabeth when she rode carefully around him that early morning on Mountbatten’s estate. If not for his composition books, and Keenan’s absence, he might have been able to persuade himself this was so.

At a complete loss as to where to put the device with which he was left, he finally incorporated it into a chest-high radio at his folk’s house. This radio of his childhood, outmoded by a new, smaller model, had been relegated to the attic. Sam impressed upon his parents his sentimental attachment to the radio, but somehow did not care if it was destroyed in a fire or taken to the junkyard.

Sam made a side trip to Chicago to cheer himself up.

Wink was the only person he knew who would appreciate this. He sent him a postcard about it, but got no reply.

He was pleased to read in the
Stars and Stripes
that the remainder of his education would be paid by the G.I. Bill.

He found a tiny apartment in West Lafayette, Indiana, a roommate named Carl Wetherald, who ate exactly one hamburger a day and wore only bib overalls—Sam dubbed him Overalls—and applied himself to electrical engineering, as there was no room for more physics or chemical engineering students. The program was fast-paced, with few breaks, and he was always taking more than the normal class load. There was a push to get the vets out and into the workforce.

But after everything he’d done in the war, it seemed easy. His saxophone gathered dust, although he still listened to jazz avidly, and kept up by listening to the radio and reading
Down Beat
and
Metronome
.

The members of the 610th were scattered into the postwar landscape, trying to pick up their delayed lives or start new ones. Sam tried to get in touch with Wink, but all of his postcards were returned. Sam figured he must have moved. He was probably just as busy.

Nightmares pursued him, dreams of burning children, dead children piled in mountain-high, tangled heaps of bodies, of orphans shunted around Europe to displaced persons’ camps, of red-haired Charlie, blown to pieces, like thousands of other children in the war.

When he woke at night, sweating, he got up, smoked cigarettes, listened to the radio, and turned all the lamps on, trying make it look like the light of day, when such things could not happen.

Except that they happened in daylight, on thousands of bright, sunny days.

Hadntz had surely shown him why her device was necessary. It was too bad that she had left out the next step.

Sam made a trip to his parent’s house. He removed the device from the radio and took it to the physics lab at Purdue in the middle of the night. The lab was relatively unpopulated at this hour except for a few hardcore physics nuts, so he was able to test the device with a Geiger counter in privacy. He was relieved to see that it was not radioactive—at least, it emitted no particles that the Geiger could pick up. Able to think of no other place that was as safe, he returned it to the radio in his parent’s attic and tried to forget about it.

On an overcast March morning in 1946, while drinking his morning coffee at an oilcloth-covered table in his apartment, he opened the Chicago
Tribune
to the full text of a speech Churchill had given at Westminster College in Missouri:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the population around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow…

Was that where Bette was now? Moscow?

Sam could see Churchill, stubby and powerful, his cigar, his black hat, his growl-face, and his transformational, childlike smile. The ex-Prime Minister’s words, spoken with his special dramatic flair and import, brought back the real world. Sam was not doing his part.

But no. It was not true. He
had
done his part in the war. It was not his fault that the world had taken this turn, that the threat of atomic war hung over them, that Stalin was now their enemy again, that small wars all over the globe holding the line against “Communism” seemed inevitable. The great promise of victory was diluted, withheld, by this new threat—the threat against which Churchill had warned, but that Roosevelt and Truman chose to ignore.

Maybe, though, it
was
his fault. He’d buried the device, tried to forget about it.

By this time it was only a month until Easter. It would be good to see Wink again.

By being even more frugal than Overalls, although it was a tight race, Sam saved enough money for his Easter weekend in New York. He even had enough for a bus ticket. Hitchhiking would have been cheaper, but not as dependable timewise.

Their agreement was to meet up at Minton’s at midnight, Saturday. It was only nine o’clock when Sam arrived. He had slept on the bus and was not planning to spend money on a room. He could sleep on the way back.

Fifty-second Street was life squared. One glimpse of The Street and Sam knew once again joy, verve, the pleasure of being alive.

The marquees ranged down the street, brilliantly lit, a celebration of postwar electrical freedom. The Famous Door. The Club. The Onyx. All these riches were spread out before him. The only thing limiting him was time and money. Which one to choose? He saw all the well-known names: Pettiford, Art Tatum, Red Norvo.

Then he spotted the Three Deuces marquee. The names leaped out at him. Charlie Parker and his quintet. Miles Davis, Max Roach, Tommy Potter, and Duke Jordan.

It was a thrill to see Parker’s name up in lights—he was getting his due. Sam recognized the other names from
Down Beat
. Maybe Wink was right. The world had been made new, and all wars were at an end, despite Churchill’s pessimistic Iron Curtain speech. This must be so. Otherwise, modern jazz would not be so appreciated.

At any rate, he thought it a good sign.

He paid and crowded in among men wearing ties and jackets, most of them holding a drink or a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He habitually went hatless, but other than that, he fit right in after getting a cold beer.

Squeezing toward the bandstand, he was transported to that night five years earlier, when he and Wink had been privileged to see Bird at the latter stage of his unfledging. His brain became a device tuned and retuned by Bird’s notes; he was tossed like a plane in a wild storm across the astonishing sky of the man’s mind. Though he’d collected what records he could afford, being here was so much richer than listening to records that it was like comparing a flat drawing of a street to walking down that street alive with people, talking to them, going into shops. Here, he could interact, see as well as hear, watch the man bring the notes out from where they flocked within him, building pressure until they burst forth as complex fragments united by tone, by instrument, by his fast-moving fingers, a blur on the keys of his alto sax.

Sweat ran down Bird’s face. Despite his seeming success, his suit was as rumpled as before. In
Down Beat
Sam had read that the guy had had a nervous breakdown out in California. Well, now he was back on his feet. The Miles Davis guy on the trumpet wasn’t half bad, but he was no match for Dizzy Gillespie.

Almost expecting to feel Wink’s tap on his shoulder, he remained well after he ought to have left, to absorb all that he possibly could. When the band finally broke, he realized that it was almost midnight.

Sprinting down the street, he flagged a cab, damn the cost. “Minton’s, Harlem,” he told the driver. “Step on it.”

As the cab reeled him through the neon wonderland of New York City, so dense with possibilities, joy sped through him; leaped out and met the neon lights as an equal in brilliance: soon he’d see Wink again.

He paid the driver with some of his last few dollars, and sped inside.

The place was packed. Monk was there, pouncing out ineffable chords. Fats Navarro was on trumpet. The sound in the tiny place ranged from overwhelming to intimate as Sam waited. The audience here ranged from the suited, as on Fifty-second Street, to men dressed in more shabby clothes, many with beards and wearing berets—in imitation of Diz, he supposed—eyes closed, intent on the music.

Wink never showed.

After Minton’s closed, Sam sat on the sidewalk out front. A kick from a cop woke him up at dawn. “Get moving.”

But where?

Pulling out his address book, Sam squinted at Wink’s entry. Parents in upstate New York; he couldn’t possibly go there.

But—he could call.

He converted his emergency three dollars into coins and nursed a cup of coffee until around nine
A.M.
It was, after all, Easter, but he was hoping that Wink’s parents would choose a late church service.

He went to the back of the coffee shop, closed the door of the phone booth, and got the operator to dial his call after depositing many coins.

A woman answered. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Winklemeyer?”

“Who’s this?”

“Sam. Sam Dance. Allen’s Army buddy.”

“Oh.” Her voice went flat. “What do you want?”

“Well, I’m trying to track him down. I wondered if maybe something—”

“What is wrong with you, young man?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you trying to do?”

A man’s voice came on the phone. “Hello? Who is this?” he demanded.

“Sam Dance. I don’t know if you remember—”

“If you call back, whoever you are, I’ll have you arrested. My wife is hysterical.”

“But—”

“Allen was killed in occupied Berlin. Whoever you are, Sam Dance knows that. I’m warning you.” He slammed down the phone.

Sam held the phone in his hand and stared out through the glass of the booth.

In front of him, the lively scene of waitresses shoving plates at people sitting at the counter blurred. He concentrated, on his breathing. Tried to orient himself.

Wink had not died in Berlin. Of this he was sure. Wink had crossed the Atlantic with him on the
Robin Sherwood
. Wink had given him this very telephone number as their boat docked.

But…he had not written. None of Sam’s letters had been returned.

Wink had disappeared into the folds of time.

Sam slammed the phone onto the receiver and wrenched open the door.

“Mister, are you all right?” called out the waitress as he made his way unsteadily to the door.

The street was cool, the air fresh on this spring morning. It did not suit his mood. He shook with anger.

Damn Hadntz, and her device.

What else,
who
else, might disappear next?

He stuck out his thumb to start the long ride home.

The OSS kept after him, sending two guys to his frugal apartment after his first year of study. They again wore black suits, and again grilled him about the device. He simply claimed ignorance. He burned to ask about Bette—could think of nothing else—but didn’t know if she was supposed to know him. Maybe they were trying to find out about her as much as the device.

One of them sat on his desk, dangling one leg and smoking a Lucky Strike, while the other made himself comfortable in the only chair. Sam wished that Overalls would put in an appearance, but he was out eating his hamburger of the day.

The two men hammered at Sam for a while about responsibility and patriotism and finally added in the promise of a good salary and when even that failed, left. But apparently this visit was automatically scheduled on the same day every year. He endured it each time unmoved. He wanted nothing more to do with intrigue, with the device. He just wanted to be left alone. He accepted that things had changed, that the world that he and Wink had inhabited had split, and that he had lost Bette. Perhaps even she had parted from him in the profound way that Wink had. His feelings about the device were not pleasant. The device, as he saw it now, had nothing to do with Hadntz’s dreams of peace. It had, instead, to do with loss. And he’d had enough loss.

He did not feel sorry for himself, particularly when he compared his situation with that of the refugees in Europe, especially the children. But it was time to accept the loss, the changes. He forced himself to go through the motions—study, eat, even listen to jazz on the radio and read
Down Beat
. Jazz was his only salvation—timeless, an ever-moving Present, an infinite Now.